Permission to Speak
by Aconitum-Napellus
Summary: Illya was raped when he was first assigned to a Soviet submarine. That memory comes back to haunt him, but Napoleon is there for him. (Sorry. I know. I've been feeling dark.) Rated 18. Gen.


The bunk is narrow, and it creaks as the other body slips into it. It's almost dark, but not quite. Somewhere there's a light, a soft red, brightening and dimming and brightening again. Around him there are the noises of men sleeping. He hears little snores, breathy noises, the creak as a man turns in his sleep and finds the bed too narrow for comfort.

It's too narrow for anything, but that other body slips in, pressing him forwards, closer to the bulkhead. He's heavy with sleep, and it takes a moment to work out what's happening. He's too startled at first to make a noise. The boat's at two hundred metres, so the only people here are his crewmates. No one else could get in or out, so the body slipping into his bed is a crewmate. Maybe it's a friend.

It isn't the smell of someone he knows. He thought he knew everyone on the boat, but there are only a few he allows himself to really know. Although they're all crowded in, and at times the place is a terrible sealed can of male sweat and gas, he still only lets a few of the men get really close.

At this depth he doesn't feel sick. There's no perceptible roll as he lies here. When they're on the surface he can lie awake for hours, stomach churning, head spinning. Down here he had been managing to get his first proper sleep of days, and now the bunk is creaking as a man slips in, longer than he is, and strong, smelling of sweat that he doesn't recognise.

Before he can murmur any kind of surprise an arm slips over his shoulder. He feels the blade at his throat. It's unmistakable. It's cold, and he takes a sharp breath, and the blade presses a little harder; a warning. _Be silent_.

He lies silent, and the blade lies still. The other hand is moving, roaming down his side. He's lying on his side, facing the bulkhead, and the man's body is pressed against his, all the way down, longer than him. His legs push Illya's feet forward, forcing him to crook them forward until they're touching the cool metal that makes the wall. That hand moves down the thin cotton of his clothing until it's on his hip. It pushes his clothes aside. Now it's feeling the curve of his buttock, slipping to the cleft between his buttocks, and he wants to do something. He wants to move or cry out, but the man must have read the tension growing in his body, because the knife presses harder against his throat again.

There's something else hard pressing against him. It's that man's cock, hard as a limb, pressing against his bared flesh. It's hot, hotter than the surface of his skin. The hand parts his buttocks and the fingers probe. He jerks away, and the knife gives just enough of a slip to cut the surface of his skin. The cut stings, and he becomes aware of how vulnerable his neck is. He closes his eyes, thinking about his windpipe and the thick veins and arteries that lead through his neck.

The hand retracts, and there's a wet little noise, and then it's back, finding the tight opening of his anus, and slicking something onto it. It must be spittle. The feeling is so startling and intimate that his breath catches in his throat. He's never been touched there by anyone. He doesn't want to be touched there by anyone. He wants to move away but his knees are hard against the wall and his forehead is against the wall and the knife is against his throat. The man's head is so close to his that he can smell his breath. He can feel his breath brushing hot against his ear.

He doesn't dare make a noise. Fear makes his heart thud in his chest so loudly that he feels sure it must wake his crewmates. Surely they'll hear it and think there's a drum being beaten somewhere? Surely they'll wake?

His blood is hissing in his ears. His breathing is shallow. Those fingers bring more spittle between his legs, and then the hot hardness is there, pushing at him, harder than the knife is pushing against his throat. It's an impossibly tight ring. It's too small, far, far too small to admit entry to something that size. His muscles spasm, tightening with awful pain, but the hardness keeps pushing regardless, the hand on his buttock, keeping it lifted away from the other. He makes a muffled noise of pain, and for a moment the hand lets go, comes up, snatches at his thin pillow and presses it over Illya's face.

The cotton is thick against his mouth, and he bites down onto it hard, breathing hot, stale air. The man behind him draws his hand back down and repositions himself, and pushes swiftly, as if he's slamming a bolt home. Illya's cry is lost in the pillow. The knife is hard against his throat. The pain in his anus is so central and so visceral that it shivers through his entire body, making him dizzy. Every time the man moves the pain explodes from that epicentre, and he gasps into the pillow, hardly able to breathe, and flashes of light burst before his closed eyes.

It's too late to do anything now. He's caught in a whirl of terrible thoughts, separate from that pain. It's too late to cry out. If they're discovered, he won't be able to explain that he didn't want to do this. He's let it go too far, and he's lost. The punishment for courting this will be worse than the act itself, terrible as the act is. He's helpless, and there's nothing he can do.

The man keeps pushing against him, fucking him with animal urgency, like a dog escaped from his yard. His breath comes in little suppressed gasps. Illya presses his face into the pillow, tears running from his eyes, the air stale and hot. One of the man's hands keeps holding that knife to his throat. The other is crooked over his hip so he can't move, drawing him back every time he tries to pull away. Illya's own arms are bent up in front of his chest, fists clenched into rocks. He's too afraid to move them. He can't move anything except that instinctive attempt to get his pelvis closer to the wall, to escape the stabbing pain of those thrusts.

The speed builds, and the bunk is creaking rhythmically. The hand is clawing into his hip and the knife is pressing at his throat, but the pain in his rectum supersedes all of that. It's the only thing there is. He presses his mouth and nose harder into the pillow and hopes to suffocate and pass out. He doesn't pass out.

Then the man stills, his cock jerking inside. He lets out a long, hot breath of gratification. He lies there for a moment, pressed hard against Illya's behind, his breath shaking in long puffs against Illya's ear. Then he pulls out, wipes himself on the blanket, and leaves.

Illya lies there on his side, facing the wall, not daring to move. His face is pressed into the pillow still, his fists like stones against it, pressing it to his face. Pain is shuddering through him in time with his heartbeats. Slime is ejected from his body, and it trickles down his skin onto the mattress. The pillow is wet with tears and saliva, wet from him biting so hard into it, wet from the moisture of his breath. He wants to get up and go to the toilet, but he can't make himself move. His entire body is frozen. He can't move.

He lies like that until the bell rings, until the other men on his watch are rising from their bunks. He has lain awake all night, and he is still in pain.

((O))

As the days go by, he never finds out which of his crewmates visited him in the night. He pulls on his clothes that morning and goes about his duty, and never speaks a word about what happened. He feels as if he has been changed in a way that can never be fixed. For a number of days he can't sit comfortably, and he walks about with a cold fear, because of the blood that came. The shame surrounds him like a cloak, and it's hard to believe the other men can't see it around him.

He knows there is one other man on board who knows what happened, but there is no way of telling who it was. He looks at the men's faces, and looks at their hands, and sometimes inhales the scent of their sweat, but he can never tell which man it was who is taller than him and has a viciously sharp knife, and came into his bed and raped him. The man never visits his bed again.

In time it becomes easier. In his months at sea he has to make it become easier because otherwise he would go mad. He never knows when a man smiles at him or claps him on the back or speaks to him, if that was the man. He doesn't know if it were a stranger, or one of his friends. At first he tries to interpret every little noise they make, trying to identify that man in their grunts or ways of breathing, but there's no way to tell. The suspicion threatens to tear him apart, so he stops himself from trying to tell.

He makes himself become the most professional, most dedicated man on the boat, and he is respected for that, but he never loses the pall of shame. He never knows who it was, from the commander all the way to the cook. It could have been any of them. He never finds it easy to trust again.

As soon as he can, he leaves the boat, secures his post-graduate placement, and hopes to never set eyes on a submarine again.

((O))

It must be fifteen years ago, but he remembers that night as if it were yesterday. He remembers every detail, down to the onion scent on the man's heavy breath, the feeling of his breath pushing warm and moist over his ear, the feeling of those fingers probing him, and then the cock pushing in. He remembers the little shudder the man gave when he came, and the way his fingers clenched hard enough to bruise, and his hot exhale of breath.

He has never spoken about it to anyone.

Now he and Napoleon are trapped in mirroring cells, bars between them, lying on their separate bunks in the semi-darkness. They've positioned themselves facing the bars, bodies pointing towards each other. Only a couple of inches are between them, and they can talk so quietly that no one will hear them. When the door to the cell block opens they pretend to be asleep.

When the guard unlocks the door of his cell with deliberate quietness, he knows what's going to happen. A guard wouldn't be careful of waking them up, if his orders were to bring them out of the cell, or do anything else that he'd been told to do. So he's here through his own motives, and there's only one motive Illya can think of.

When the knife touches his throat it's like a weird replay of fifteen years in the past. He can almost feel the slight sway of the submarine, even though he's a hundred miles from the sea. His eyes are open, and Napoleon's eyes are half-open, and although they're looking at each other it's as if he's on the submarine again, twenty-one years old, barely an adult, lying in the dark.

This time he has been trained in so many methods of self-defence that he has been called on more than once to teach them to new recruits.

He jerks at the man's wrist so fast that he's toppled over and on the floor before he can make a noise. Illya's knee is on his wrist, and his fingers fall open. The knife is in Illya's hand. It's as sharp as that one fifteen years ago. He puts his other knee hard in the guard's chest, his lower leg lying along his body, foot between his legs. He can feel the erection, firm against his ankle. It is swiftly subsiding, but he knows he hasn't made a mistake. He draws the knife across his throat with so much force that the blade catches on vertebrae. Blood wells, suddenly pooling across the floor, covering his hand. The man gapes like a landed fish, eyes wide, a terrible gargling noise coming from his throat. By the end of the stroke, all light has gone from his eyes.

'Christ, Illya,' Napoleon murmurs in quiet awe from the other cell.

Illya gets up off the dead body and looks at the blood all over his hand. He goes to the little sink in the corner and washes it off his hand and the knife, then wipes it dry on the bedclothes. He's remembering the blood and semen he found on his bedclothes in the submarine. He had managed somehow to hide the stain and taken the sheet into the tiny washroom to clean it off. His crewmates thought he was hiding the evidence of a wet dream. They had laughed and punched him on the shoulder and asked him who the girl was.

He gets the guard's keys, and his gun, and gives the knife to Napoleon. He doesn't want to touch it anymore. His blood is pushing so hard round his body that he feels dizzy.

'Hey,' Napoleon says as soon as Illya has unlocked his door. He puts his hands on Illya's shoulders. 'Hey, are you all right? Huh? It's all right, partner. He didn't get what he wanted.'

'No,' Illya says. The man is still lying on the floor in his cell, the blood around him a dark pomegranate pool. He feels no sliver of regret.

'Hey,' Napoleon says again, pulling him closer and hugging him tightly. 'That guy is _very_ dead. That's your work. Let's get out of here.'

((O))

Back home, he pours vodka into a glass he's already filled multiple times that evening. The bottle was new when he got it out of the ice box, but now it's two thirds empty.

Napoleon lets himself in with the spare key, and eyes up his partner sitting on the couch. Illya's tie is gone and his collar is open, a few buttons undone. He couldn't stand the constriction against his neck.

Illya looks up and raises his glass. He feels warm all through, except somewhere in the centre of his body, where everything is like ice.

'Napoleon,' he says, and his voice is completely steady. 'Join me.'

Napoleon picks up the bottle and regards it. 'I was with you when you bought this, just before we left for that mission,' he says.

'A wonderful vintage,' Illya replies, and his voice is still steady, but there's bitterness in his tone that has nothing to do with the words he's speaking.

'I think you've had enough,' Napoleon says, screwing the lid back on and putting the bottle out of reach.

'No,' Illya says firmly. 'No, Napoleon, I have not had enough. There is still a third of a bottle left, and there are more bottles in the liquor store on the corner, and I have money in my wallet.'

'They won't sell it to you, drunk,' Napoleon cautions him, and Illya scoffs, because he knows he'd be able to convince them he was absolutely sober.

'I could walk along a white line with my eyes closed,' he says.

'No doubt you could. You're a skilful man,' Napoleon says. 'But you've had enough to drink.'

Illya draws himself up on the couch. It feels as if Napoleon is very far away, even though he's standing only a few feet away. He could be on the other side of a ravine.

He touches his hand briefly to his throat, drawing his finger across that place where he has a thin white scar, straight as a ruler's edge. It's narrow as a cotton thread, only visible if you know it's there.

'Napoleon, give me that bottle back,' he says. He knows he would be able to convince the man in the liquor store that he's sober, but he's not so sure about fighting with Napoleon over possession of a bottle. 'Haven't you ever been to a Russian social gathering? Do you know how much of that stuff we can hold?'

'I've seen a man go blind from one of those social gatherings,' Napoleon says meaningfully, and Illya tuts.

'Inexpertly made vodka. This isn't inexpertly made vodka. I bought it in a shop, Napoleon. A store. _В магазине_. Whatever you want to call it. I won't even have a hangover.'

'The amount you've drunk, a hangover is going to be your intimate friend tomorrow, _mon ami_.'

Napoleon puts the bottle a little further away, then sits down on the couch.

'Illya,' he says seriously. 'You have had _enough_. Any more, and you'll be in hospital having your stomach pumped. Now, I want you to talk to me.'

Illya regards him obliquely. 'Without a drink in my hand?'

'I can make you coffee?'

'I don't want coffee,' Illya says. 'I want vodka. Failing that, I want scotch.'

'Illya,' Napoleon says. 'No.'

He looks at the bottle, far away on the sideboard. He still has his tumbler, so he picks it up and tips the contents into his mouth before Napoleon can take that away too. It feels like ice in his throat.

'Talk to me,' Napoleon says. 'We've got out of a place like that before. You've killed a man before.'

He remembers the blood covering his right hand. It had been hot, and the iron scent had been thick in the air. When he had washed it off it had taken a long time for the last traces to disappear down the plughole. Blood takes such a long time to disappear.

He remembers the feeling of the knife on his throat. He remembers that man's cock, hard in his clothes, hard against his leg until it softened out of fear, just before he killed him. He wishes he'd cut his cock off too, and rammed it in his dead, gaping mouth.

He puts his glass down, and it rattles against the wood of the table. How strange. He hadn't realised he was shaking, but now he sees that he is. Napoleon captures his hand and holds it in his.

'I – can't,' Illya says.

He snatches his hand suddenly away from Napoleon's, and stands up. His legs aren't half as steady as he had expected them to be, but he sways to the window and stands there, forehead against the cold glass, looking down at the street below. Car headlamps and tail lights streak the ground in white and red. Soft yellow light streams from apartment windows. Shop fronts with neon signs glow into the night.

Napoleon comes up behind him and puts an arm around his chest, and it's all he can do not to flip him like he did that man. He's too drunk, though. Somewhere he knows that if he tried to flip Napoleon it wouldn't work. Napoleon turns him around and reaches past him to lower the blind, and then he hugs him.

It's a gentle hug, full of love. It's nothing like that man's arm over his hip fifteen years ago. He leans against Napoleon's soft, warm body, and closes his eyes. He's shaking again, and Napoleon's hand slowly strokes up and down his back. He doesn't cry. He is beyond crying. His emotion is such a weird thing, trapped in an icy bubble somewhere in the centre of him. He doesn't know how to access it and let it out.

'Come on,' Napoleon says, taking him back to the sofa.

He sits down and picks up his empty glass. He really wants another drink.

'No,' Napoleon says, taking the glass from him. 'Illya.'

He turns a little and looks directly into Illya's eyes. Illya has to look away. Napoleon's eyes can see too deeply.

'That guard was going to sodomise you,' Napoleon says plainly.

The ice shatters, and the feeling is all there, all of it, whirling through him like a hurricane. He is shaking, and god he needs another drink, and then he is crying. He presses his hands over his face and pushes against his eyes, and Napoleon holds him again, arms around him, gently rocking him.

'Fifteen years ago,' Illya says at last, through his hands that are still over his face. 'On a Soviet submarine, in the night. He had a knife. It was dark and he didn't speak. I never knew who it was.'

'God,' Napoleon says, holding him harder. 'God.'

He feels like that boy again, twenty one, out of his depth, deep under the sea. He remembers the visceral pain. He shakes against Napoleon, and Napoleon hugs him and strokes his back. After a long while Napoleon says gently, 'It's late, Illya. It's very late.'

'Yes,' Illya murmurs.

He feels enormously tired, as if every cell of his body wants to let go. It's as if his body has decided to acknowledge the alcohol he's drunk at last. His stomach suddenly rebels, and he's vomiting limply down his front.

'Jesus Christ,' Napoleon says, looking around himself for something to grab. There's a shirt hanging over a chair, and he uses it to mop Illya's front. 'Any more in there?' he asks. 'Come on. Let's get you to the bathroom.'

'Late,' Illya says, because there's warm liquid soaking his trousers, and his stomach is lurching again, and more vomit spills from him.

'This is why all good Russians should stop at half a bottle,' Napoleon tells him. He's unbuttoning Illya's shirt and peeling it away. 'Jesus, Illya, have you pissed in your clothes?'

'I think – I want to go to bed,' he says, because he's feeling seriously bad. He feels confused, as if he's floating somewhere, as if his body isn't his own.

'Come on,' Napoleon says, helping him up, but he takes him to the bathroom, and sits on the edge of the bath with his hand on Illya's back as Illya rests his arms on the toilet seat and vomits into the porcelain bowl.

'A little better?' Napoleon asks.

Illya slumps back on his heels and stares at the mess in the toilet. Napoleon fills a tooth glass with water and puts it to his lips.

'There you go. Have a bit of this. Come on. A little more. Try to drink the whole thing.'

He's not sure what happens then. At some point he's naked and too cold, and Napoleon is draping a towel over him. Napoleon's hand is on his back, and he's being sick again. Then he's in his bed, a plastic bowl next to his head, Napoleon sitting on the mattress, stroking his back in slow circles. He fades in and out, and then he's sick into the bowl and Napoleon is holding his head. Then he thinks he falls asleep.

((O))

In the dream he's in the submarine, lying in his narrow bunk, and there's a hand on his hip and a knife at his throat. In his dream he knows what to do, and he flips the man onto the floor and he tries to slice his neck open with the knife, but he can't hold it properly and it won't make a cut. He wants to see the man's face, but he can't because his eyes won't open properly, or the blanket is falling over the man's face, or everything is blurred. The man takes the knife from him and stands up and walks away.

((O))

There's a bird singing somewhere, and light so strong that it seems to be burning his eyelids away. His head is pounding and his mouth tastes of vomit. He tries to open his eyes, and at first nothing happens. Then he manages to open them a slit, and he sees the bookshelves in his bedroom, then the bright panes of the window, the curtains open. He sees someone looking down at him. Napoleon is sitting on the side of his bed, smiling.

'Did you get any sleep at all?' Illya asks, his voice a rasp.

He has a vague memory of Napoleon sitting there last night, like a guardian angel. It seems like Napoleon hasn't moved all night.

'A bit,' Napoleon replies, gesturing at a thin crumple of blankets and a pillow on the carpet. 'I tell you, your floor does not make a comfortable bed, Illya. But you survived the night, at least.'

'Oh,' Illya says. At the moment he's not too sure if he's alive or dead, so surviving the night feels like an open question.

'Now, repeat after me,' Napoleon says, 'I promise I will never drink that much vodka again.'

Illya just regards him through half-open eyes. It was vodka, wasn't it? That was what he was drinking last night. He remembers that, then he remembers Napoleon coming in, then he remembers –

'I told you, didn't I?' he asks.

'Yes,' Napoleon nods soberly. 'You told me. Thank you for trusting me with that, Illya. I wish you'd told me sooner.'

'I – didn't know how,' he says quietly. If you talk about something, you make it real, and he's spent fifteen years trying to deny reality. 'It's not – '

' – the kind of thing you talk about,' Napoleon finishes. 'No, I know. But, between us, there aren't the kinds of things you don't talk about. You can tell me anything, Illya.'

'Thank you,' Illya says.

'I'm going to get you an alka-seltzer,' Napoleon tells him. 'Maybe in a couple of hours you'll feel like coffee. We can spend the day talking, or not talking, just as you choose. Next time you want to drink yourself to death, call me first, okay?'

'Okay,' Illya promises.

He smiles a tired smile. He feels as if there's still blood on his hand. He feels as if he's falling. He feels as if Napoleon will reach out and catch him when he falls. He feels as if that mission and fifteen years ago are a blur of things that were inevitable and would always end like this. He has been burying things for so long, and finally he has permission to speak.


End file.
